Hunters pa-3

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Disappeared?" Castillo asked. "Weren't they sitting on him?"

  "Not tight enough, apparently," Sieno said.

  "Perhaps," Kocian said, "on hearing that his dear friend Vladimir was about to become president of Russia, he was overcome with nostalgia for Mother Russia and simply had to go home."

  "He knew Putin?" Castillo asked.

  Kocian nodded. "They were stationed in Dresden in the KGB together. And Putin was sworn in on 7 May 2000."

  "What else do you know about this guy, Billy?" Castillo asked.

  "Know? I don't know enough to print anything. But I do know that Colonel Sunev-not under that name, of course-was in Paris, Vienna, Budapest, and Baghdad, and some other places, starting right after Mr. Sieno tells us he disappeared, and as recently as six months ago. And that he knew Mr. Lorimer of the UN, which I find fascinating. And is a good friend-I told you-of Pevsner."

  "What was he doing in the States, testifying before a congressional committee?"

  "I'm only a simple journalist, not an intelligence officer," Kocian said, "but I think they call that 'disinformation.'"

  "To what end, Billy?" Castillo asked.

  "You will recall, Karlchen, that at that time there was a great deal of concern about Soviet nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands? That they would be stolen from depots because there was no more money to pay the guards?"

  "I remember that," Torine said. "It scared me."

  "Nothing personal, of course, Colonel, but if it wasn't so dangerous, I would be amused by American naivete," Kocian said.

  "Watch it, Billy!" Castillo snapped.

  Kocian shook his head and went on: "This loss of ex-Soviet, now Russian Federation, nuclear weapons could be prevented if the United States came up with the money-this is a simplification, of course-to bring the guards back on the payroll. I think you actually gave them several billions of dollars to do just that.

  "To convince your Congress of the danger, Russian 'defectors'-Sunev was one of maybe two dozen-'escaped' to the United States and 'told all.' Russia was no longer the enemy. Russia was now a friend. The Muslims were the enemy. They were liable to detonate nuclear weapons stolen-"

  "Or bought with drug money," Sieno said, sarcastically.

  "Right," Kocian said.

  "What?" Castillo asked.

  Sieno said, "There were stories-widely circulated-that the Russian Mafia bought a bunch of nukes from former KGB guys in Chechnya. Or at least bought KGB connivance, depending on which story you were listening to, so the Mafia could steal them themselves and then sold them to bin Laden for thirty million U.S., cash, and two tons of high-grade heroin from his laboratories in Afghanistan…worth seven hundred million on the street."

  "Did you believe this story, Mr. Sieno?" Kocian asked.

  "I had a lot of trouble with it," Sieno said, carefully, after a moment.

  "Why?" Kocian asked.

  Sieno almost visibly formed his thoughts before he replied, "You know that George Tenet said that the purge of the KGB when the Soviet Union came apart was, quote, pure window dressing, unquote?"

  "I didn't know that," Kocian said. "Well, I suppose the former head of your CIA had to be right about something."

  Castillo glared at him. Sieno ignored him.

  "All they did was change the name from Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti to Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti," Sieno said, bitterly.

  Castillo thought, His Russian pronunciation of that was perfect.

  "And put Mr. Putin in charge?" Kocian asked, innocently. "So things could go on as before?"

  In Russian, Castillo asked, "How good is your Russian, Paul?"

  "Not quite as good as yours, Colonel, but not bad," Sieno replied, in Russian.

  "And what is a nice Italian boy like you who speaks Russian like a Muscovite doing eavesdropping on the Cubans in Argentina?"

  "Counting the days until I get my pension," Sieno said.

  "You were a bad boy in Moscow?" Castillo asked.

  Sieno hesitated for a moment before he answered.

  "Not exactly a bad boy," he said. "But I was one of the major reasons Tenet said what he did. And there were a lot of people between me and the DCI who didn't want him to hear any more of that from me. So they brought me back to Langley from Moscow and told me-I should say, implied with credible deniability-that I had two choices. Option one, I could go to Buenos Aires as deputy station chief and they would arrange for Susanna to be here and we could double-dip and, as long as I kept my mouth shut, I could look forward to saving a lot of money for my retirement. Or, option two, I could stay in Washington and leak what I knew and they would guarantee that I'd be fired for cause. And, of course, lose my pension and my reputation."

  "Jesus!" Torine said.

  "And being the moral coward that I am, I took option one," Sieno said.

  "So why are you telling us this now?"

  "You won't like the answer," Sieno said.

  "Try me," Castillo said.

  "You shamed me, Colonel," Sieno said. He pointed at Munz. "And so did you, mi Coronel."

  "What do you mean 'shamed'?" Castillo asked.

  "When this whole thing started-the night Masterson got away from Munz and me…"

  "You're losing me, Paul," Torine said. "Masterson 'got away from you'?"

  "When these bastards snatched Mr. Masterson, Alex Darby assigned me to sit on him and the kids at their house. So Alfredo and I did just that. We sat in a car outside his house. And Masterson went over the fence in the backyard, walked to the train station, took a train downtown to meet the bad guys, and they blew him away. He's dead because I fucked up, in other words…"

  "I don't believe that, Paul, and neither does the ambassador or Alex Darby," Castillo said.

  "Let me finish, please, Colonel," Sieno said. "Bottom line is, if I'd done my job right Masterson would not have climbed the fence and gotten on that train. I took this personally. I was going to find out who did it and get back at them. Then you showed up, Colonel, and you were in charge and I didn't like that at all. At one time, I'd been a pretty good clandestine service field officer and Alex Darby knew that, and here is some Army major with friends in high places about to call all the shots. It wouldn't have been the first time I'd seen that happen.

  "So I went to Darby-who is one of the really good guys-and asked him what the hell was going on. He told me that you were the best special operator he'd ever known, that he'd seen you operate in Iraq and Afghanistan and knew what you had done about getting that stolen 727 back. And that since my ego was involved, and this was very important, he was going to keep me out of whatever you were going to do. He didn't want me getting in your way."

  He took a breath, then went on: "I wouldn't have taken that from anybody but Alex Darby. But I've seen him operate. So I went along. And sure enough, he was right. You found that bastard Lorimer when nobody else could. You set up and pulled off that snatch operation in Uruguay in less time than I could believe, and-"

  "That was not a complete success," Castillo said. "Lorimer and one of my guys died. Alfredo took a bullet…"

  "And you took out a Spetsnaz assault team to the last man. That doesn't happen often. They're good."

  "You're sure they were Spetsnaz?" Castillo asked.

  "Either Spetsnaz or Stasi or somebody else, maybe even Cubans, trained by-more important, controlled and financed by-the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti. Who else but the FSB, Colonel? It's time you started calling a spade a spade. You can't talk about missing or stolen Russian nukes and leave them out of the discussion."

  "You said I shamed you. That Alfredo and I shamed you. What's that all about?"

  "Colonel, you did what you thought was the right thing to do-and so did you, Alfredo-without thinking of the consequences to yourself. I used to be that way before the bastards at Langley finally ground me down. That was shaming. So I decided to get off the sidelines."

  "Well," Kocian said, "that makes it two of us in this room who know
the KSB is behind all of this. It's nice not to be alone anymore."

  "Three of us, Ur Kocian," Sandor Tor said.

  When Castillo looked at Tor, he went on: "I suspected after the incident on the Szabadsag hid that your assailants were ex-Stasi-"

  "What incident on the Szabadsag hid?" Sieno asked.

  "You've been to Budapest, too, Paul?" Castillo asked. "You do get around, don't you? These bastards tried to snatch Billy on the Freedom Bridge-"

  "Franz Josef Byucke, Karlchen," Kocian interrupted.

  "…And when Sandor interrupted that, they shot Billy," Castillo finished. He then said, "Please go on, Sandor."

  "I suspected ex-Stasi made the attack on Ur Kocian. The one Max bit and allowed us to catch said that he was from Dresden. That attack was professional. The proof came with the attack on you."

  "What proof?"

  "We took fingerprints from the bodies of the men you shot," Tor said. "They did not match the fingerprints of former members of the AVH or AVO. And both of the men you had to deal with had garrotes. Only three services used the garrote-the Hungarian Allamvedelmi Osztaly and Allamvedelmi Hatosag and the Ministry for State Security of the German Democratic Republic. Since they weren't ex-AVO or ex-AVH, only ex-Stasi is left. And who is running all three? The KSB."

  Castillo started to say something but stopped when the door chimes went off.

  Sieno got up and walked to a wall-mounted telephone by the door. he said, "Si, por favor," hung the phone up, and turned to the others in the room.

  "There's another nice Italian boy in the lobby. He says he has our supper. I told the doorman to send him up." [THREE] Everyone was seated around the table in the Sieno dining room, ready for their meal from Rio Alba. When Jack Davidson-who was slicing individual portions from the enormous bife lomo with what looked like a huge dagger-sensed Sieno's eyes on him, he looked up and said, "Nice knife, Paul."

  "It's a gaucho knife," Sieno said. "I bought it to hang on the wall of my vine-covered retirement cottage by the side of the road. Then I started to use it."

  "You Jewish, Davidson?" Santini asked.

  Davidson looked at him curiously. "Yeah. Why?"

  "Then you will be fascinated to learn that there are forty thousand Jewish cowboys -gauchos- here."

  He stopped slicing. "You're kidding!"

  "Absolutely not. Mostly East Europeans. When they got off the boat in the 1890s, what Argentina needed was cowboys, so off to the pampas they got shipped. They wear the boots and the baggy pants, and stick knives like that under their belts in the back, but when they take off their cowboy hats there's the yarmulke."

  "I have to see that."

  "Keep slicing, Jack," Castillo ordered. "Some of us are hungry."

  Davidson made a mock bow. "I humbly beg the colonel's pardon, sir."

  Castillo's cellular vibrated.

  "?Hola?"

  "Congratulations," Alex Darby announced, "you are now the proud lessee of a ten-room villa in Mayerling. They finally left, just now."

  "Susanna Sieno and Bradley are in the shopping center in Pilar, buying sheets, blankets, and food."

  "And lightbulbs," Sieno said. "Don't forget the lightbulbs."

  "And lightbulbs," Castillo said.

  "I told my maid to bring lightbulbs and food. I didn't think about sheets and blankets."

  "You're bringing your maid out there?"

  "And her daughter," Darby said. "This place will not run itself."

  Castillo, remembering who Darby was, stopped himself just in time from asking if that was smart. Instead, he asked, "Can you call her cellular and tell her she can bring the stuff to the house?"

  "Yeah. I'll do it, and I'll call the gate and tell the guards to let them in. It might be a good idea if she spent the night here, Charley, to get things organized. Or would you rather that I stayed?"

  "No. I want you here, to pick your brain. If you hurry, there just may be a little steak from Rio Alba leftover."

  "Remind Paul that a hungry boss is a difficult superior," Darby said and the connection went dead.

  Before he could lay the cellular down by the charger again, it vibrated.

  "?Hola?"

  "They're on their way to the bus terminal," Yung reported. "I'm sure they didn't meet anyone they knew here."

  "Good. They're expected. Let me know when you get there."

  "Got it," Yung said and broke the connection.

  Castillo reported the exchange to Munz, who nodded but didn't say anything.

  "Paul, Susanna will spend the night out there," Castillo said.

  Sieno nodded.

  "I was going to recommend that," he said.

  Davidson handed Castillo a plate. It held thick, pink-in-the-middle slices of filet mignon, slices of vine-ripened tomato, and a stack of papas Provencal.

  "This isn't the haute cuisine we got used to in Afghanistan, Charley, but maybe you can wash it down with enough wine to make it edible." As a monitor showed Alex Darby parking his car in the basement garage, Yung called to report that everyone was safely at the terminal, had their tickets, and would soon be able to get on the bus.

  "Let me know when that happens," Castillo ordered. "And when the bus leaves the parking lot."

  "Got it," Yung said and the connection went dead. "Alex," Castillo said as Darby helped himself to slices of steak, "what we're going to do now is I'm going to recap what we've been talking about and then you're going to tell us what you think."

  "Shoot," Darby replied. Castillo had not quite finished when his cellular vibrated.

  "?Hola?"

  "Christopher Columbus, Confucius, and the pilgrims have sailed for the New World," Yung reported.

  "Give me a call when you get to Plymouth Rock."

  He put the cellular in his pocket and gave Alfredo Munz a thumbs-up.

  Munz nodded and silently mouthed, "Mucho gracias." "Two things, Charley," Alex Darby began. "One, it's a reasonable scenario. My gut feeling is that if you're not right on the money, you're not far off. Two, if number one is on the money then you're in trouble. For one thing, you're going up against the conventional wisdom at the agency and you know how popular you are in Langley. And for another…" Alex Darby gently shook Castillo's shoulder.

  "Charley, why don't you go to the Four Seasons and get some sleep?"

  "Jesus, what did I do, fall asleep?"

  "You were asleep with your eyes open for the last five minutes and then a minute ago you closed them."

  "You're right. All I'm doing here is spinning my wheels." He tried to stifle a yawn. "Can we pick up where I dropped off in the morning? In Mayerling?"

  "I'll pick you up at nine?"

  "Fine. How do Jake, Fernando, and I get to the hotel?"

  "The Cubans may be watching this building. If they are, they know our cars. So, instead, if you walked down the hill to Libertador and caught a cab, all they would learn-even if they followed it-was that three people left the building…"

  "Including the one whose dog took a dump on their sidewalk," Castillo interrupted.

  "…and went to the Four Seasons," Darby finished. "Let's do it," Castillo said and pushed himself away from the table. [FOUR] The Buquebus Terminal Montevideo, Uruguay 0115 9 August 2005 The Juan Patricio, one of the Buquebus ferries that ply the river Plate between downtown Buenos Aires and downtown Montevideo, is an enormous Australian-built aluminum catamaran with space on the lower deck for about one hundred automobiles and light trucks. The main deck can seat, in comfortable airliner-type seating, about two hundred fifty passengers. There also is a duty-free shop and a snack bar. The first-class deck, up an interior stairway from the tourist deck, offers larger seats and its own snack bar.

  There are bulkhead-mounted television sets in both classes that play motion picture DVDs. But on the late-night voyages, few people watch them, preferring to doze in their seats and wake up on arrival.

  The only communication between the Munz family and either Yung or Artigas on the Juan Patricio's v
oyage to Montevideo-aside from Yung's half-dozen smiles that he hoped would be reassuring-had been a fifteen-second encounter between Artigas and Senora Munz when the lights of Montevideo appeared.

  Standing at the snack bar, Artigas had caught Senora Munz's eye and nodded toward the port leading to the ladies' restrooms. She had joined him there a moment later.

  "When people start going to their cars, take the girls and go down the stairs to the car deck. Senor Yung will be waiting for you there, to take you to our car. It's a dark blue BMW with diplomatic license plates."

  Senora Munz had nodded her understanding, then gone into the ladies' room. Artigas saw Yung get out of his chair and walk to the stairwell. Then Artigas returned to his seat. As Yung had discreetly followed the Munz family as they walked onto the ferry, Artigas had driven the embassy BMW onto the ferry's car deck. But then Artigas had forgotten to tell Yung where he had parked it. Luckily, Yung had had only a little trouble finding it halfway back on the starboard side.

  To explain his early presence on the car deck, once he had found the BMW and unlocked it, Yung popped the hood and looked intently at the engine, as if expecting some sign of some impending mechanical difficulty.

  Only when he had been standing there for ninety seconds did it occur to him that it was possible-if unlikely-someone had been watching them all along, and, as soon as Artigas had left the car deck, that someone had hooked up a primer and a couple pounds of plastic explosive to the BMW's ignition.

  Unlikely but not impossible.

  The bastards are capable of anything-including using C-4.

  The first few drivers who came down to the car deck to claim their vehicles looked wonderingly at the nicely dressed Chinese man flat on his back, studying the undercarriage of the BMW that had Corps Diplomatique license plates.

  Yung finished in time to be standing at the foot of the stairway when the Munz family came down.

  He had ushered them into the car and was in the front seat by the time Artigas walked up.

  By then, the ferry was nudging into the pier.

  Cars began driving off the ferry a minute or two later. Immigration formalities had been accomplished in Buenos Aires. At one counter in the terminal there, Argentine officials had run passports and National Identity Cards through a computer reader, then handed them to Uruguayan immigration officers sitting at the next counter. The passports and National Identity Cards were then run through a Uruguayan computer reader, then handed back to the travelers, who, even though physically in Buenos Aires, were now legally inside the borders of the Republica Oriental del Uruguay.